Climate Change in the Southwest: University of Arizona experts comment on the IPCC WG1 Report Release

The first report to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment will be released on Sept. 27, 2013. The Working Group 1 report, entitled “The Physical Science Basis,” covers what we know about how the Earth’s climate is changing and why, as well as what climate change is likely in the future, depending on the levels of greenhouse gases emitted by humans over the next century and beyond. A panel of UA climate science experts has been assembled to comment on the report and to field questions. The press and public are welcome to the event, as well as the UA community.

The panelists are as follows:

Jonathan Overpeck, Co-Director, Institute of the Environment - a founding co-director of the Institute of the Environment, as well as a professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences, Peck has published more than 160 papers in climate and the environmental sciences and served as a coordinating lead author for the Nobel Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment (2007).

Julia Cole, Professor, Geosciences - Cole's research centers on expanding our view of recent climate variability, using geological and biological proxies for climate along with instrumental records and climate models.

Mike Crimmins, Associate Specialist in Climate Science, Soil, Water, and Environmental Science - Crimmins runs the Climate Science Applications Program in Cooperative Extension. He serves as a liaison between the climate research community at the University of Arizona and the communities across Arizona by communicating research findings through education and outreach programs and identifying applied climate research needs.

Russell Monson, Professor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment - Monson studies how climate change in the Western US is influencing the carbon and water cycles in mountain forests. I also study how the emissions of organic compounds from forests across the globe influence atmospheric chemistry, particularly with regard to the the lifetime of compounds that influence climate

Joellen Russell, Associate Professor, Geosciences - Russell's research focuses on the ocean's role in climate. Her earlier work on the westerly winds led to her greatest research accomplishment so far: the creation of a new paradigm in climate science, namely that warmer climates produce stronger westerly winds.